I built a home and ran a business in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's next DLC, and the added role-playing guarantees I'll spend another 70 hours in my current game of the year

While Henry goes through several abodes in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, none of them quite feel like home. But Warhorse's Legacy of the Forge DLC, which is set to launch on September 9, puts an end to the young master's couch-surfing ways. We're finally getting permanent lodgings to settle down with – though it's a bit of a fixer-upper – along with a blacksmithing business to run and a lengthy quest line.

It's a lot, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Despite the glut of fantastic titles I've been spoiled with this year, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 remains my personal game of the year as things currently stand. But after rolling credits just a few months into 2025, I haven't found much reason to return – not for lack of activities, as there are undoubtedly side quests left to unearth, but because I always feel like I've been cut loose once the main quest in an RPG has wrapped up.

Plus, Henry is at this point a terminator in plate armor, and nothing short of starting afresh seemed capable of giving me back the sense of hard-fought progression I adored at the beginning of the game. But with Legacy of the Forge, I've got one – finally giving Henry somewhere to settle down.

Planting roots

In Legacy of the Forge, Henry reconnects with his father's blacksmithing ties to the city of Kuttenberg, setting up a shop of his own while reconnecting with his late dad's friends. While the ultimate goal will be to prove himself as a blacksmith and repair the town's intricate clock, my hands-on with the DLC revolves around its property customization.

Within the property – which includes a forge and shop, upstairs apartment, and large garden – there are a large number of customization slots, some with practical purposes. Build Henry a nice wardrobe, for example, and it will gradually repair any clothes stored within. The forge is fully functional (though blacksmithing is only mandatory for two parts of the DLC, I'm told), and your garden is so big that there's room to build a decked-out alchemy shed. I had a lot of fun choosing the material and color of the main building – you can choose different options for upstairs and downstairs – and took great pleasure in swapping out a muddy outdoor path for lovely, lovely gravel.

While building anything costs gold – and quite a lot, for some of the bougier options – it also takes prestige, which is earned by completing randomized quests added in the DLC. Marked with their own icon, these range from dueling with other blacksmiths, forging items for customers, gambling (I can't connect the dots on that one), and generally helping around the city.

I spent so long kitting out Henry's apartment that I only had time for one quest, and suspect I picked the wildest of the bunch. When someone asked for help removing their husband's tooth — which blacksmiths really did! – I figured it would be a quick buck. What I didn't count on was that their husband was very reluctant to have the tooth pulled, resulting in me chasing a very scared adult man around the city before knocking the tooth out by complete accident. Oh, Henry.

These quests are refreshed each morning, which means there's a slice-of-life element to Legacy of the Forge. To me, that's the most exciting part of the DLC. Across the 70-odd hours I've sunk into Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, my favorite parts were far and away the downtime – aimless horse rides, stopping at inns, soaking up the atmosphere – and the prospect of building an actual life and routine in Kuttenberg is music to my ears. If you're a fan of blacksmithing in particular, you can take specific orders from customers or craft what you want and chuck it in the shop's chest, from which your staff will sell it all for a slightly lower fee.

In the same way I'll boot up Oblivion and wander like a tourist, returning to Bohemia with objectives to sate my lizard brain is all the justification I need for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 to become a role-playing mainstay. Given the DLC also comes with an estimated 15-20 hours of story, it's proving impossible to talk myself out of jumping back in – if you need me when it launches on September 9, no you don't.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review: "Even if some friction can lead to frustration, its realization of medieval life remains utterly absorbing"